Tag Archives: i think i have OCD

Wow, is this article by Dr. Fred Penzel ever relevant! I hear similar stories to this all the time from teen readers.

It begins:

Living with OCD is never easy, and this can be especially true if you are a teenager. At a time when you’re trying hard to learn about who you are and how to find a place for yourself in the world, having a disorder like OCD can make you feel so different from everyone else.And the thought of having to talk about the disorder with anyone, let alone your friends and classmates, can be very scary. School is a small world, and things have a way of getting around pretty quickly, or so it can seem.

But talking to people and asking for help are the best ways to improve your situation. Your schoolmates may surprise you with their capacity for understanding. We often fear what we don’t understand. And your parents can help you to get the help and resources you need to succeed in school and beyond.

But what happens when your parents, the very people who should be most concerned about your well-being, don’t understand OCD and don’t know how to help you? Or worse yet, don’t believe that you are suffering from a disorder at all?

To read the entire post, click over the article on the IOCDF website here.

From time to time, life becomes so overwhelming that I have to temporarily remove my email address from my website. It’s that case right now. Between busting my butt on my next novel (especially after I changed story ideas late in the game!), trying to be healthier, working full-time as a recruiter, and trying to be a good friend, daughter, and sister, my life is pretty crazy right now.

I recognize that I’m not the only resource available for OCD sufferers, but even so, I count it as an honor that people would be willing to share their stories with me. It always hurts me to take my email address down. In its stead, I’ve added a new page on my website: OCD Help. It’s exactly what I would tell someone who approached me for advice, and I hope it will be helpful for you– or for someone else that you’d like to pass it along to.

Also, please note that I have a compendium of OCD posts here, with topics that range from ERP, HOCD, OCD & Christianity to medication, OCD & children, and remission. I hope you’ll check it out.

When Jeff Bell, spokesperson for the International OCD Foundation, spoke for our OCD Twin Cities event, one of the things he said that really stood out to me was that there are no shortcuts in treating OCD.

That’s true, or at least it was in my case. I wanted easy answers: for deep theological conversations to solve my problems, or for comfort and reassurance from friends to be enough, for an hour-long conversation with a therapist each week to take away the anxiety, for an easy prescription to fix everything.

I definitely did not want the hard answer: exposure and response prevention therapy.

My psychiatrist didn’t mince words in his description: “It will be hell.”

It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life, but one of the most necessary and most rewarding. For me, there was no shortcut to healing, and since I was already living in OCD hell, the best way out was to keep going.

So, believe me, friends: I get it. ERP therapy is hard, so hard. You might think you won’t survive it. You might think your loved ones won’t survive your going through it. You might think it’s sinful or disgusting, and your exposures are probably going to be loathsome and repellent to you.

If you need to, go ahead and look for shortcuts. I know I had to.

But in the end, there were none for me, and I’d only wasted time looking for them.

While experiencing it, ERP was hell. But on the other side? It was my rescue.

If you’ve spent any time hanging around this blog, you know that I’m a huge proponent of treating OCD with Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy, which is the best treatment available. It’s the first and only* treatment I recommend.

People often balk at it, which I understand: it’s difficult. Very difficult. People want an easier option. But I wouldn’t recommend a bandaid for a cancerous tumor, and I won’t suggest anything else.

But I’m too embarrassed …

But I can’t afford it …

But there are no ERP specialists in my area …

Those are all very valid reasons for seeking another treatment option, but the GOOD NEWS is that you can do ERP on your own, if you are committed to it, and if you’re willing to work hard.

It’s still important to have an expert guiding you, so please track down one of the following books:

With the help of one of these books, you can be starting your own ERP journey for under $50 (most under $20!).

Read the whole book from cover to cover and do all the exercises. Throw yourself wholeheartedly into pursuing wellness, freedom, and peace. You can have your life back. Believe me. I languished in the hell of OCD for 20 years before just 12 weeks of ERP therapy broke that torturous yoke. This can be your story too.

If you’re not convinced, go to jackieleasommers.com/OCD and read my posts about ERP. Then drop me a comment or an email with your questions!

* I think medication can definitely help too– but ERP is a better option than meds, and in my (non-MD) opinion, meds should come alongside ERP, not ever replace it.

Recently someone emailed me and asked if my OCD was more about worrying about hell than it was about worrying if God was real, and I had to say honestly that after twenty-five years of OCD, there aren’t a lot of themes I haven’t experienced. Is God real, is Jesus real, is heaven real, is Christianity legitimate, was Jesus really God’s son or was he the devil in disguise, have I committed the unpardonable sin? OCD can cycle through a lot of themes in a quarter of a century.

That’s the thing with OCD: it often doesn’t remain in one place. When I was still in high school– and even into my college years– I kept thinking, “If I could just sort out X, then I would be happy.” So I’d wrestle with X, read books about it, seek reassurance, talk things over with my youth pastor and parents, research things online … and if I was ever able to “solve” it, then … my OCD moved onto Y.

Hitman: Contracts by TheKingArthur at deviantArt

I was in perpetual motion for so many years– but I never got anywhere. It was all spinning my wheels.

Exposure and response prevention ignores the emergencies that OCD is sparking in every corner and goes after the OCD itself. Instead of relying on compulsions, which temporarily help to “solve” individual issues, ERP is like a hitman with a mission to assassinate the OCD.

It is SO HARD for OCD sufferers to be correctly diagnosed and then find the right treatment and a good cognitive-behavioral therapist. In fact, it takes an average of 14-17 years for someone to access effective treatment.

That stat stings my heart. I feel it deeply because of my own personal struggle.

I developed a sudden onset of OCD at the age of 7. I wasn’t diagnosed with OCD until I was 22. I started ERP (exposure and response prevention) therapy at 27. That’s twenty years, folks– fifteen just till diagnosis alone.

Growing up, I just assumed that I “thought too much”– was an “overthinker” and especially sensitive to issues of morality. I didn’t understand that other people were also undergoing the same doubts as I was but were able to move past them with ease. I, on the other hand, would get trapped. The exit door to my brain was stuck shut, so all my thoughts just milled and churned and generated intense anxiety. I didn’t know that others even had the same thoughts as I did, nor did I realize how it would be possible to let such thoughts come and go.

In childhood, I cried all the time. In fact, I cried every single night for three years in a row. I never told my parents about this. I was so scared that they wouldn’t be able to “fix” me that I preferred to just rest in my own sadness, still clinging to the hope that *someday* I could be fixed. As long as no one told me it was impossible, it still felt possible, and even thought I was terrifically sad, I kept that hope as my lifeline.

High school was a beast. I got straight A’s (OCD drove me to perfectionism) and graduated at the top of my class. I was a class clown, and I had some amazing friends. But I battled intense spiritual doubts and lived in great fear. My tenth grade year was one of the hardest of my whole life. Only those closest to me knew it.

My doubts intensified in college. They escalated to a whole new level. Thankfully, I had a solid support system in my new friends (people who remain my support system to this day!). And though they couldn’t understand what I was going through, they loved me.

After undergrad, things fell apart. In a nutshell, I lost my grip on reality– my doubts had grown so large and out of control that I no longer knew if I could trust my friends or my own human experience. Finally, for the first time in my life, someone used the words mental illness with me. It felt shocking.

I was encouraged to meet with a therapist (unfortunately, a talk therapist– not effective for OCD), who also got me in to meet with a psychiatrist, and I was finally diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. A diagnosis fifteen years in the making.

I spent about a year with that first talk therapist, and it was more damaging than anything else. I finally “escaped” and never again set foot in that clinic. Meanwhile, I was an SSRI lab rat, trying out a slew of various medications to treat my OCD. I eventually went back to talk therapy– this time to a much better therapist, who was a true blessing, although she still didn’t truly understand OCD, and so my therapy included a lot of reassurances. In other words, this kind, amazing woman who loved me was just reinforcing my compulsions. Not good. I also took a break from trying out medications after one stole all my energy and made me rapidly gain weight. I was overweight for the first time in my life– all due to a medication– and have struggled with my weight ever since.

Five years after that initial diagnosis, my psychiatrist was out of ideas. Literally. She asked me what I thought we should do next. I, of course, had no clue. She referred me to an OCD specialist.

This incredible man– Dr. Suck Won Kim– changed my life. He got me onto the right medication (almost immediately) and essentially required that I begin ERP, even giving me the name and contact information for the therapist who would ultimately allow me to bottle up my OCD and put a stopper in it. Dr. Chris Donahue, to whom I’m forever indebted.

Twelve weeks was all it took. In one sense. In another, it took twenty years.

My life was a mix of depression, anxiety, compulsions, “bad” thoughts, and wrongness, and then twelve weeks later, I felt the burden of OCD lift from my shoulders. I was giddy with freedom. Five years later, I still am.

I hear from OCD sufferers every week who are in their 50’s, 60’s, or even older, who are still seeking appropriate treatment. This absolutely breaks my heart.

On the flip side, I’ve had the incredible experience of meeting Maddie, 11, and her incredible parents, who leapt into action almost immediately and got her into ERP within months of her OCD onset. In the same year, she developed OCD, was diagnosed, and was treated. Marvelous!

That’s one of the reasons I blog about OCD. To help people to understand earlier what they are dealing with and to encourage them to seek appropriate treatment (ERP, with or without medication). It still just boggles my mind that in 2013, mental health practitioners still don’t know that ERP is the answer. People get passed around from talk therapist to talk therapist, when the solution should be so ready, so available.